The Daily Mail - Trivialising Racism, so you don't have to.
9th Mar 2009 19:15:29
I read today in The Mail, that a Muslim Police Officer is planning to sue the force after workmates laughed at his beard. They laughed at your beard, old fellow? I hear you cry. Well, steady on, it might not be very nice to go laughing at a colleagues' personal appearance, regardless of faith, but sueing, surely not?
Well, no. I'll just clarify before I go on. The title of the article was "Muslim PC sues after workmates 'laughed at his beard'", which I thought was probably a little extreme, and so clicked to read the article. You should probably do that too.
When I got to the end of the article, I found out that the list of things that PC Javid Iqbal was/is sueing for was considerably higher, and considerably nastier than some beard-laughing-at. They include:
- Calling him a 'f***ing Paki'.
- White officers openly discussing how they were 'better' than ethnic-minority colleagues.
- He claims officers pulled faces at each other if told they had to go out on patrol with him.
- Also that they forced him to walk home from a job instead of picking him up.
- Mocking his accent.
- Laughed at his beard.
Now, naturally, the above are allegations, but of the above 6 allegations, the top four range from serious to very serious indeed, dwarfing "beard-laughing-at" quite considerably.
Another case of the Tabloids trivialising racism. Now, as I said, few people (and I am certainly not one of them) knows the intricacies and truth of the case, but certainly the headline "PC Sues Force after alleging workmates called him a 'f***ing Paki'" conveys the seriousness of the allegations far more easily.
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